


Good Things Come to Those Who Look

by notbeloved07



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Flirting, Fluff, M/M, Mildly alternate universe, Pining, Romantic Comedy, Science, Science Boyfriends, Science Bros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:24:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notbeloved07/pseuds/notbeloved07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a prompt in the avengerkink meme titled "rom-com pining":</p><p>Back when Tony was at MIT and Bruce at Harvard, at some point they met--science convention, bar night, what have you--and had an instant connection.  Bruce let it go, in part because he was focused on Betty, but Tony didn't have a whole lot of moments where he'd felt actual genuine connections and he held on to that encounter. </p><p>Now, after Afghanistan, Tony realises just how important those connections are and he tries to find Bruce. When he stumbles on to him in Shield's files, he talks Fury into putting Hulk on the Avengers roster, brings him in, and desperately tries to balance world-saving with hardcore flirting and coming up with ways to get Bruce to stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Midnight Connection

**Author's Note:**

> Rating may go up in future chapters.
> 
> Title subject to change.

(Bruce POV)

It was almost midnight on a Saturday night towards the beginning of a new term, so naturally, there was a Final Club party in full swing in the building directly overhead. Luckily, Bruce was far enough underground in the forgotten Cambridge tunnels that he could only hear his own typing and the whirring of the liquid nitrogen refrigerator. He toggled around the graphs of various surface plasma on his monitor. It didn't help; no parameters would yield the aggregation levels he needed.

He just about decided to call it a night when he heard the door click open behind him. Bruce whirled around to come face to face with a college kid dressed dashingly in a suit and tie.

"Easy there," the kid smiled, putting away the sleekest mobile phone Bruce had ever seen.

Bruce opened his mouth, but found himself at a loss for words, so he closed it again. Suit-and-Tie used the moment to look around and narrow his eyes at the screen.

"What are you working on?" Suit-and-tie asked. "Graphing surface plasmon vs pH and wavelength? Are you looking for a particular value?".

"Who are you?" Bruce asked when he found his tongue. "How did you get in here?"

"Are you looking for higher adsorption?" Suit-and-Tie asked, ignoring Bruce's questions and moving to toggle the graphs.

"Yes," Bruce's mouth replied before his mind caught up.

"Well, have you tried catalytic hydrogenation? I've been working on a process that can stabilize against citrate aggregation--"

"Oh! Damn, I'm such an idiot. If I just stabilized against the aggregation instead of trying to find a citrate that minimized the problem..." Bruce's voice trailed off as he pushed the other kid's hands off his keyboard and started programming a new model taking the suggested ideas into account.

For the next hour, Bruce and the dashing guy in the suit rebuilt the models with imposed stabilization. Working with him was like nothing Bruce had ever done before--they fit together perfectly, each pitching brilliant ideas exactly when the other needed them. Only when they were finally done and just waiting for the computer to generate the model did he remember that he still didn't even know the guy's name.

"So," Bruce started awkwardly, "you never answered my questions. Who are you? Why are you here? And how did you even get in here?"

Suit-and-tie laughed. "I'm--" he faltered here. "I'm Nikola Tesla."

_Well, if that was the game they were playing._

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," Bruce smiled graciously. "I'm Richard Feynman."

"As for what I'm doing here, well, I was at the Owl Club dance upstairs, when a hot blonde and I decided to get some privacy down here... and then I guess I got distracted by your pretty electronic lock. Nice security system, by the way, I take it you made it? Better than the D.O.D, and probably a million times less expensive. Though you do need to work on better immunity to side-channel attacks."

"Yeah, I made it from scraps out of the robotics department electronics dump. So what happened to the blonde?"

"I'm not sure. She was still there when I pulled the power, but I think she was gone by the time I brought the system fully on-line again. So yeah, you successfully cock-blocked me tonight. I hope you're happy." Tesla pouted, but there was no heat in the accusation.

"So now it's my fault that you broke my security system and trespassed into my lab?" Bruce raised an eyebrow.

"It was a distractingly elegant system, and that's definitely your fault. But I forgive you." he smiled. "Anyway, my turn to ask questions. What are you doing here underground? And why are you calculating surface plasma anyway?"

Bruce sighed. He wasn't really sure whom he could trust these days, but if this "Tesla" character wanted to steal his work, he would be able to do so regardless of how Bruce answered. He decided to go with the truth.

"I'm developing a cheap and efficient water purification system. Last time I developed a cheap. efficient way to do something, my PI slapped a patent on it and now some company's making a shit-ton of money, while people who really need it can't access it."

"Flood-resistant rice from Spears Agriculture? That was you?"

Bruce nodded sadly.

"Damn," Tesla frowned. He pulled out his sleek mobile phone. "Well, I'm going to show Spears a--"

"Leave it," Bruce interrupted, grabbing his hand. "I can't get the patent back and taking down Spears is only going to make it more expensive for people who need the rice."

Tesla put the phone away. "Well, this is awkward," he commented after a few seconds of silence ticked by.

Thankfully, the processor ended the awkward moment by presenting the finished model, which did indeed find that with the right level of catalytic hydrogenation, they could easily achieve adsorption.

"Looks like we're in hardware mode!" Tesla beamed.

"What? I still need to do some calculations and run a few models to make sure--"

"Oh, come on. Sometimes you need to stop doing preliminary calculations and just try it out for real."

"You are far too excited about this," Bruce eyed him suspiciously.

"But this is the fun part! The part where we stop pencil-pushing and find out if it works."

As it turns out, he was right. Bruce didn't usually find the actual execution of his theories that interesting, but Tesla was bubbling over with enthusiasm, and they worked in perfect tandem. He didn't even notice the hours go by as they finished the construction.

"See?" Tesla smiled, pouring the last part of the gold citrate solution into a tube as Bruce adjusted wavelength of the radiation generator. "This is how we science. It's not all that pencil pushing theory."

Bruce was about to formulate a response when he suddenly realised that Tesla was standing too close. The UV detector was beeping and maybe he should have been paying attention to the readings, but Tesla's tie was off holding some flask in place and his buttons were open and his breath was warm and then soft lips were on his own, and Bruce was kissing back, desperately, lips parting and--

Then his brain caught up with what was going on. Bruce pushed Tesla away, a little more roughly than he intended.

"No, I'm sorry," Bruce said. "This isn't. This isn't what's going on."

"You're trying to tell me you're not turned on right now?" Tesla raised an eyebrow, but took a step back.

"No, that's not what I'm trying to say. Look, I... there's this girl."

"A girlfriend?"

"Uh, well. I'm working on that." Bruce felt himself blushing.

"I see. Well. Um. Sorry I miscalculated."

"Yeah." Bruce coughed.

"Is that what the black tea with sugar is for?"

"What?"

"Your script running on your other processor. I took the liberty of looking at it. You're doing some calculations with a solution of sugar and theaflavins, the stuff in black tea. The only tea you have around here is green. So, black tea for someone else."

"Yeah," Bruce blushed even harder.

"It's alright, dude," Tesla chuckled. "But, like I said earlier, you need to stop calculating and just, you know, _do_. Go and get her."

Bruce probably should have thought of some response, but it was nearly dawn now and it has been too long since he had any sleep, so he just stared.

"Anyway," Tesla announced, stepping away. "I'm out. Nice meeting you Dr. Feynman. Fix up your security against side-channel attacks--you can't assume attackers will play by the rules. Good luck with that purification system."

"Thank you, Mr. Tesla. Feel free to come back and visit--if you can get in, that is."

*************

Tesla did get in three more times, even after Bruce fixed the side-channel problems with his security system, but he never dropped by when Bruce was in; Bruce only knew that he had come because of the formulae left on his board or a forsaken prototype of something he had been modelling. He apparently gave up after the third time.

As for Bruce, he did manage to actually ask Betty out, and the subsequent years were the best of his life. She was perfect for him, sharing his sense of humour and his taste in music, and even if she never understood what he was doing the way a stranger did underneath an Owl Club party one night, she encouraged and supported him and he could easily see himself spending the rest of his life with her.

Until that fateful day when it all went to hell.


	2. To the Ends of the Earth

(Bruce POV)

Bruce had been on the run for years by the time he ended up in Calcutta. Two years in Minsk before he realised there were agents watching him, eight months in Cairo without an incident, three months in Gaza before he hulked out from rocket fire, two years in Chengdu, three months in New Delhi.

At three years in Calcutta, he had been settled for so long he had pretty much let his guard down. That was when he was approached by a little girl who lead him to a dilapidated house at the edge of the city.

"Should have got paid up front, Banner," he muttered as she disappeared out of the window.

"You aren't in it for the money," a voice said from behind. Bruce turned around to see an elegantly dressed man walking towards him.

"You brought me to the edge of the city," Bruce said, looking around. "Smart. I assume the whole place is surrounded?"

"That wasn't my call,” the man rolled his eyes. “They wouldn't let me near you without this useless entourage. I have them off comms, though, so we can get a bit of privacy. And if your alter ego shows, they'll probably just run away, so we might as well be alone."

"Who are they?"

"SHIELD. You know, Strategic... Homeland... Intrusive Encumbering Little Dicks? I don't even remember."

"SHIELD," Bruce couldn’t help but chuckle. The acronym sounded about right. "How did they find me?"

"They never lost you. They just kept their distance. Stopped me from approaching you alone. I could probably have got around them, but I happened to owe Fury a favour. So now I'm here to bring you in for him."

"And who are you?"

"Huh. I was hoping that I made more than a fleeting impression on you. But then it has been years, so I'll forgive you. Just like I forgave you when you cock-blocked me in that underground lab of yours all those years ago."

Suddenly Bruce remembered an extraordinary time of modelling and building, discovering and creating, side-by-side with a stranger, deep into the night.

"Nikola Tesla," he whispered.

"Oh good, you do remember. Well, since I know your real name now, I guess you might as well know mine. I'm Tony Stark."

Bruce's eyes widened. "Tony Stark. Wow. I should have guessed."

"Yeah, you probably should have. But no worries. You should come back with me."

"Come back where?"

"To Stark Tower. You'd love it. I mean I know you like helping people in places like this, but we both know you could help people a lot more with a proper lab. Which I have all ready for you. We could make so many improvements on your erratic-rain-resistant rice and generalise the methods to other forms of produce--"

"Mr. Stark--"

"No, call me Tony. Oh and, did you know that there haven't been any breakthroughs in the area of water-purification since the one from your lab a decade and a half ago? I mean, fuck that shit, right? There are still so many people without clean water, so someone--"

"Tony--"

"And you could also help me with the clean energy business. If we can circumvent peak oil, think about how many lives that would save--"

"Tony!"

"What?"

"SHIELD didn't ask you to bring me back to Stark Tower, did they?"

"Oh, right." Tony deflated as he sat down. "Well, we'll have to make a detour by SHIELD headquarters and help them find some trinket first."

"Some trinket?"

"Well, this, technically," Tony passed him a smartphone with a glowing blue cube on the screen. "It's a tesseract. Apparently able to kill a lot of people and SHIELD somehow lost it to some insane villain. It emits gamma radiation, so they thought we could help find it. So, short detour at SHIELD and then I can show you the most--"

"And what if I say no?"

"Would you really say no? Ten floors. All R&D. We could build things together again. You could actually improve living conditions on a large scale instead of--"

"And what if the Other Guy says no?"

"Then I get to see the Other Guy," Tony smiled. "It's really win-win for me."

"SHIELD headquarters," Bruce furrowed his brow. "Isn't that a helicarrier? I don't think you want me in a flying aircraft carrier swarming with agents who want to put me in a cage."

"What? Nobody is going to put you in--"

"STOP LYING TO ME!" Bruce yelled, slamming his fists onto the table and lunging into Tony's space.

Tony blinked and looked into Bruce's eyes.

"Can I kiss you right now? I kind of want to kiss you."

"Maybe later," Bruce chuckled.


	3. Flying and Falling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehe. I've been promising this chapter tomorrow, but it's done, so, why not?

(Tony POV)

Mere hours after Tony plucked Bruce out of India with nothing but a toothbrush and a change of clothes in his bag, the two scientists plunged right into the lab, working together as if they had been doing so for years. Bruce still had to reacquaint himself with the power of modern technology, but with the right hints from Tony, he was up to speed in no time. He'd even started responding to the unsubtle flirtation Tony was casting relentlessly at him.

Bruce's level of comfort with being and working with him should have made Tony glad. It should have meant that the plan to bring him home was looking up. But instead, it had him worried.

"I didn't know about the cage," Tony said, out of the blue, shortly after Loki was brought in. "JARVIS has been running a decryption program since we hit the bridge, but I'm not in yet. I swear, I--"

"I know," Bruce cut him off. "I know you didn't. But _I_ did. Know about the cage, that is. Not run a decryption program. Which, are you out of practice or something? Because for someone who thought the _Pentagon_ was a piece of cake back in college--"

"SHIELD is an international spy organisation," Tony countered. "Anyone could hack the Pentagon; their encryption system still-- Wait, you're derailing me. What do you mean you knew? Why did you come if you knew? Aren't you even a little upset about this?"

"It'll keep the agents here comfortable," Bruce shrugged. “And it reduces the smell of fear in the air--the Other Guy hates the smell of fear. Besides, I’m used to it."

Tony felt the blood rushing to his head at this. How must the people in Bruce's life have treated him if he was "used to" people preparing a cell for him? And how could Tony have brought him here into all this? All he wanted to do was to endear himself to this man, and instead he had led him to a cage.

"Hey, don't blame yourself," Bruce admonished, reading Tony's thoughts. "I chose to come with you, and I knew what I was getting into."

"I won't let them put you in a cage," Tony insisted. "Or toss you off a helicarrier."

"Thirty-thousand feet could be fun," Bruce shrugged. "What?" he frowned at Tony's dubious expression. "You've never taken a wake-up dive off a plane? What have you been using that suit for? Priorities!"

Tony felt a smile tug at his lips--he had never met anyone else who could joke about being thrown off a helicarrier. Or who could make him smile when he was trying to feel guilty.

"You're unbelievable," he breathed.

Bruce smiled. "The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract, but it's gonna take weeks to process."

"If we bypass their mainframe and direct a re-route to the Homer cluster, we can clock this at around six hundred teraflops," Tony replied, scrambling to get his mind back on task.

"Damn. Really? Could you send me your Karmarkar function? Not that I doubt you, of course. I just want a feel for your coding style."

"Is that the only thing you want a _feel_ for?" Tony lowered his voice conspiratorially as he sent over the code with a flick on the screen. The play lacked subtlety, but Bruce had not exactly agreed to go with him to Stark Tower yet, so this was pick-up art _on the clock_.

"Well, I do recall you being a bigger fan of hardware than software," Bruce replied, not missing a beat. "But I don't suppose you'd want SHIELD agents getting their eyes on that. I wouldn't."

For a moment, Tony just stared at Bruce, unsure of whether the soft-spoken physicist even recognised the innuendo in the exchange.

Then Bruce looked up with an exaggerated expression of innocence on his face and all the processes in Tony's brain short-circuited; here was an unassuming scientist who had not only taken Tony's innuendo-laden comment in stride, but returned it with both more subtlety and more grace.

"Six hundred teraflops on this, huh?" Bruce asked, ignoring Tony's shocked expression. "Moore's law certainly hasn't taken a break in the past few years."

"What?" Tony nearly yelped. "I don't even know what to say to that. I'm going to sweep you off your feet when we get to Stark Tower." He paused. "You are coming back with me after this, aren't you?"

"Hmm," Bruce sighed. "The last time I was in New York, I kinda... broke Harlem."

"Well, I promise a stress-free environment, no tension, no surprises--"

"Ow!" Bruce yelped when Tony zapped him with it. Tony put away the pointer.

"Hey, are you nuts?" Captain America interrupted, marching in with his eyebrows furrowed.

"Jury's out," Tony replied, drawing a chuckle from Bruce.

Tony turned back to Bruce. "You have got a lid on it haven't you?”

Tony looked deeply into Bruce’s eyes, searching for a hint of green. Bruce’s eyes stayed the same dark brown colour, but started to crinkle at the edges.

“I love when you look into my eyes like that,” Bruce smirked. “It’s so romantic.”

Tony stuck his tongue out at him. “What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?"

"Would you still invite me over if I said yes to any of those?"

"Well, I'd want you in my lab, so I'd have to invent some sort of partial sound barrier. Head-sets are out of the question, of course; they'd get in the way."

"Or you could set speakers up so wave interference cancels the sounds in certain parts of the room,” Bruce supplied. “Not that I even listen to jazz."

"But you _are_ coming over to play in my lab, then?" Tony grinned.

"Is everything a joke to you two?" Rogers was fuming.

"Funny things are," Tony replied.

"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny," Rogers shouted. "No offence, doctor."

"None taken," Bruce chuckled, "I wouldn't have let this guy anywhere near me if I couldn't handle... being poked with things,"

"Oh, that is good to know," Tony smirked. "Because I am thinking of poking you, very, very--"

"Not in front of Captain America, Tony."

"I was only going to say--"

"Can you two just... focus on the problem?" Rogers all but shouted.

"You think we're not?" Tony countered. "Why did Fury call us and why now? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."

"That is _definitely_ news to me," Bruce teased.

"Hey, just because I object to redundant calculations--"

"You think Fury's hiding something?" Rogers asked.

"He's a spy," Tony replied. "Captain, he's _the_ spy. His secrets have secrets. It's been bugging him, too, hasn't it?"

"Uh, I just want to finish my work here, and--"

He cut himself short when Tony shot him a look. _Back me up,_ he thought harshly, hoping that Bruce would get the silent message.

"A warm light for all mankind," Bruce acquiesced. "Loki's jab at Fury about the cube..."

Tony smiled inside as Bruce explained his doubts much more convincingly than Tony ever could. After that, it took only a few harsh words to get Rogers to leave.

"So that's the guy my dad never shut up about? I'm wondering if we shouldn't have just kept him on ice," Tony muttered when Captain America finally stormed off.

"Yeah, like you didn't just have a blast winding him up," Bruce chuckled. "And you weren't even _trying_."

"Point," Tony acknowledged with a tilt of his head.

He couldn't remember the last time he had a partner who loved winding people up as much as he did.


	4. Too Easy

This was too easy. Working with Tony was far too easy the first time, and between the shameless flirtation and merciless teasing, it was only getting easier.

Bruce mentally shook himself. If the rumour mills were anywhere close to the truth, Tony Stark flirted with everyone, took any hot trot he laid eyes on to bed, and never remembered their names in the morning--if he was even still there in the morning.

And Bruce, well, Bruce didn’t work like that. Instead, he could see himself falling in love with this amazing, quirky, brilliant man, and wouldn’t that be a disaster?

But Tony didn’t fear him. He was the only person who knew exactly what Bruce was and didn’t show an ounce of fear. The only one who insisted on not seeing him as a monster. The only one who joked about the Other Guy.

The only one for whom Bruce returned to Manhattan after the catastrophe on the Helicarrier.

It was only when Rogers said “Stark, we got him. Just like you said,” that he knew he had made the right choice.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Hulk was having a good day. He smashed two gods and a thousand space soldiers, and hey, how many people could put that on a resume?

And to top it all off, he found a friend. Well, he hadn’t actually met the friend yet formally, but he knew that the Tin Man was his friend, because Puny Banner knew, and what Puny Banner knew, Hulk knew. It was too bad it didn’t work the other way around.

*~*~*~*~*~*

The first thing Tony saw upon waking up with a start was the Hulk giving a deafening and frankly majestic roar.

“Ah! What the hell?” Tony looked around at Steve and Thor. “What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me.”

“Kiss wake Sleeping Beauty,” the Hulk grinned, and holy shit, Tony hadn’t known that the Hulk could talk, that’s pretty impress--wait, _what_ did he say?

“Oh my god. He’s joking, right?” Tony pushed himself upright. “Somebody tell me he’s joking.”

Thor smiled and patted the green giant’s arm. “My friend, you shall go down in legend as a warrior so great his kiss could stop the grasp of Death herself.”

Steve nodded from where he was crouching, “I never believed in fairy tales, but I think I learned something today.”

Hulk smiled smugly at him.

“You really kissed me and I _missed_ it? That’s not fair. I demand a replay.”

“Hulk not that easy. Hulk has standards.”

“Wait but if you already... Oh, fuck you all!”

The three jokers burst out laughing.

“I can’t believe you fell for that,” Steve snickered.

“You bastards,” Tony muttered, standing up. “That was not funny.”

The Hulk raised an eyebrow in an expression eerily like Bruce’s.

“Okay, maybe it was a little bit funny,” Tony smiled. “So, are we done here?”

“We won,” Steve nodded.

“Yay!” Tony said. He turned to the Hulk. “Hey, have you ever tried shawarma? There’s a shawarma place two blocks down. I don’t know what it is, but I want to try it.”

The Hulk grunted.

“We’re not done yet,” Thor interrupted.

“Right. And then shawarma after?”


	5. For Now

“Ah, there you are,” Tony said, as Bruce woke up in a Hulk-shaped crater in the penthouse of Stark Tower. “You missed the party. Luckily, you didn’t miss shawarma. Now hurry up and--”

“Oh my god! Did the Other Guy hurt you?” Bruce was looking up at him, scanning Tony’s smashed suit and obvious injuries.

Tony smiled. “Oh god, no. But he did smash a whole bunch of aliens, and from what JARVIS tells me, a certain demi-god might not be too pleased with him at the moment.”

 _Wait a second_ , Tony thought. _If Bruce didn’t remember what happened when he Hulked out..._

“He also saved me from falling to my death and kissed me awake. Like sleeping beauty. He said that, too. ‘Kiss wake sleeping beauty’, were his exact words.”

“The Hulk _kissed_ you?!”

“Yeah. It was glorious.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Don’t believe me? Ask Thor or Steve. They were both there.”

Bruce groaned.

“How does that make you feel, huh?” Tony prodded, helping Bruce up. “You spent all those hours flirting with me, parrying all my science ripostes and the Other Guy got to kiss me first? Dude who can’t even string a sentence together? Doesn’t that make you-- mmphgh.”

And Bruce was kissing him, aggressively, pushing him back until Tony was backed up against a wall, and yep, this was definitely shaping out to be a good day.

Except it didn’t exactly feel right to start everything on a lie.

“Uh, just one thing,” Tony pushed Bruce back. “That thing I said a minute ago about the Hulk kissing me...”

Bruce backed up. "Oh, fuck you," he glared. Then he smiled and kissed Tony again. “And I do intend to.”

“You have a mouth on you, doctor.”

“Hmm... it has many talents.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, wouldn’t you like to know,” Bruce smirked, pushing himself back. “Shawarma, you said?”

Tony pouted at him for a moment, but then grinned and slung an arm over his shoulder. Bruce smiled as Tony guided him towards the door.

Later, he was going to worry about all the many ways this could go wrong. Later he might wonder how the Hulk would deal with heartbreak. Later, he might be consumed by guilt, run away, and then probably feel guilty for running away.

But for right then, he was going to enjoy what he had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the abrupt ending. I am setting this fic as complete because I am quitting fandom and would like to put my stuff in order before leaving.


End file.
